Skating in February - Shakespeare's Monkeys

skating in February

skating in February

in the deepest season
we tightened laces
and mittened ourselves
against winter.

February on the ice
where the pasture
ran out, we sailed along.

wobble-ankled
daredevils tempting
thin ice,

and time until time
and cold froze toes.

our ice-tatted lace-knots
defied undoing.

we walked back
on thin edges,
teetering across the meadow
like scarecrows.

Alcuin of York -
There are two kinds of things that could improve this. The first is message, mostly a personal preference for me. At the end I thought, "So?". Basically you went skating. So? I understand that this is supposed to be a vignette, which is certainly a valid purpose, but the lack of anything that might give us an emotional connection - to feelings, to what happened that made this skating event important or memorable - this lack makes the entire piece seem to lack any purpose.

The other area I think could use improvement is best illustrated by some of your lines: Wobble-ankled / daredevils tempting / thin ice. These are good, tight, effective lines. Compare them to the first strophe, which might have read something like: In the deepest season / tightened laces / mittened against the winter. Basically, if you could make more of the poem like those middle lines, I think the whole would be improved.

Some of your phrasing is very nice: ice-tatted; defied undoing; teetering across..., etc. I really like these.

Alcuin

Norm -
The poem was just meant to open a little window into the past. There was no particular point to be made, as this was a regular event in my childhood winters. It is simply a memory poem that I hoped would evoke memory in others. Poem as vehicle to move the reader into his own past. Many people my age who have read this particular piece have told me they recalled similar experiences of their own and were taken back immediately to their own Februarys.